UN Remains Barred From Visiting US
Prisons Amid Abuse Charges
A recent visit to a federal penitentiary by President
Obama has prompted the United Nations to give another
shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison
system.
By Thalif Deen
(Matt York/AP)
July 25, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
-
"Mintpress"
- When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno
Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on
living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no
one in authority could prevent him from visiting the
prison.
Obama, the first sitting
president to visit a federal penitentiary, said “in too
many places, black boys and black men, and Latino boys
and Latino men experience being treated different under
the law.”
The visit itself was
described as “unprecedented” and “historic.”
But the United Nations
has not been as lucky as the U.S. president was. Several
U.N. officials, armed with mandates from the
Geneva-based Human Rights Council, have been barred from
U.S. penitentiaries which are routinely accused of being
steeped in a culture of violence.
Back in 1998, Radhika
Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence
Against Women, was barred from visiting three Michigan
prisons to probe sexual misconduct against women
prisoners.
Although she had made
extensive preparations to interview inmates, Michigan
Governor John Engler barred Coomaraswamy on the eve of
her proposed visit.
The late Senator Jesse
Helms, former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, blocked a proposed prison visit by
Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office
in New York, who was planning to observe living
conditions in some of the U.S. prisons.
Obama’s visit has
prompted the United Nations to give another shot at
seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.
The U.N. Special
Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, and the
Chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,
Seong-Phil Hong, have jointly called on the U.S.
government to facilitate their requests for an official
visit to U.S. prisons to advance criminal justice
reform.
“I look forward to
working with the U.S. Department of Justice on the
special study commissioned by the President on the need
to regulate solitary confinement, which affects 80,000
inmates in the United States, in most cases for periods
of months and years,” Méndez said early this week.
“The practice of
prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement inflicts
pain and suffering of a psychological nature, which is
strictly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture,”
he said.
“Reform along such lines
will have considerable impact not only in the United
States but in many countries around the world,” he
noted.
Hong, who leads the U.N.
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said a visit to
federal and state institutions “will be an excellent
opportunity to discuss with authorities the ‘Basic
Principles and Guidelines on the right to anyone
deprived of their liberty to bring proceedings before a
court’, and to promote its use by the civil society.”
The Working Group has
already drafted a set of Principles and Guidelines that
“will help establish effective mechanisms to ensure
judicial oversight over all situations of deprivation of
liberty.”
The document will be
considered by the Human Rights Council in September.
According to published
reports, there have been charges of unhealthy living
conditions and physical beatings, specifically against
minorities, including African-Americans and Latin
Americans, in the U.S. jail system.
Last month, the
administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and
the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern
District announced far reaching reforms, including the
proposed appointment of a Federal Monitor to probe
continued prisoner abuses in Riker’s Island, described
as the second largest jail system in the United States.
Other measures include
restrictions on the use of force by prison guards and
the installation of surveillance cameras.
Asked whether U.N.
Special Rapporteurs (UNSRs) have previously been
permitted into U.S. prisons, Tessa Murphy at Amnesty
International (AI), told IPS that Juan Mendez hasn’t
visited any U.S. supermaximum facility prisons in his
role as UNSR.
He has, however, visited
Pelican Bay in California as an expert witness in
ongoing litigation there.
She also said AI has
called on the U.S. State Department to extend an invite
repeatedly requested by the UNSR to visit the United
States to examine the use of solitary confinement in
federal and state facilities, including through on-site
visits.
“AI believes this
external scrutiny is particularly important in the case
of ‘super-maximum’ security facilities where prisoners
are isolated within an already closed environment. We
continue to call for this access to be provided.”
She pointed out that AI
has released several reports calling for access – based
on an extensive body of work on long-term solitary
confinement and its damaging effects.
Antonio M. Ginatta,
Advocacy Director, U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch
(HRW), told IPS it is a momentous time in the United
States as it re-examines and moves to reform its
criminal justice system.
President Obama himself
just spoke to the need for this reform, and specifically
highlighted the harms caused by solitary confinement.
“Yet the State Department
continues to fail to allow the Special Rapporteur on
torture access to U.S. confinement facilities to review
their use of solitary confinement. It’s as if they
missed the President’s speech,” he said.
Ginatta said an
invitation to the Special Rapporteur is years overdue.
“In light of the
president’s speech and his visit to the El Reno prison,
the U.S. Department of State should change course and
immediately extend an unrestricted invitation to Special
Rapporteur Mendez and the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention,” he declared.
After his prison visit,
Obama said: “My goal is that we start seeing some
improvements at the federal level and that we’re then
able to see states across the country pick up the baton,
and there are already some states that leading the way
in both sentencing reform as well as prison reform and
make sure that we’re seeing what works and build off
that.”
Providing details of its
meetings with U.S. State Department officials, Amnesty
International told IPS that in February it met with
Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby in the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and Director William
Mozdzierz in the Bureau of International Organization
Affairs, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs to
emphasise the importance of facilitating external
scrutiny by the SRT as well as to hand over a petition
to the State Department (with over 20,000 signatures, on
the same issue.)
AI said SRT Mendez has
provided them with a list of prisons he wishes to visit,
including in Louisiana, California, Arizona,
Pennsylvania, New York, and the Federal Bureau of
Prisons.
Secretary Mozdzierz,
stressed to AI that the State Department has a strong
national interest in ensuring that the United States
lives up to international treaty obligations.
Deputy Assistant
Secretary Scott Busby emphasised how committed the U.S.
government is in providing access for the SRT.
However, Secretary
Mozdzierz emphasised that access to state prisons is
dependent on the individual governors and state Attorney
Generals being amenable, and there are no mechanisms by
which the State Department can ensure a positive
response.
He also made it clear
that he would stress to state authorities the importance
of facilitating the SRT’s requests. Both Directors
acknowledged that BOP ADX prison in Colorado was
‘unavailable’ to SRT Mendez.
SRT Mendez, who met with
AI prior to the meetings above, asked AI to seek an
explanation for the reason that he had been told in
correspondence with State Department that federal
prisons were “unavailable” to him.
Secretary Mozdzierz
confirmed that the reason federal prisons were
“unavailable” to the SRT was because of ongoing
litigation in ADX; Cunningham V BOP, which has been in a
structured settlement process since last year.